242. Hiring Great People feat. Jeff Gardner, author of Love Your People

You're not going to hire the right people every time. Increase your chances by learning the "Who" methodology by Geoff Smart.

About “Love Your People” by Jeff Gardner
Love over fear is the key to exceptional leadership. 'Love Your People' shatters conventional wisdom by advocating for a love-based approach that sparks unparalleled organizational success. Through gripping narratives, bold insights, and disruptive guidance, this manifesto redefines love as a strategic weapon, unleashing innovation, autonomy, and transparency. It challenges fear-driven leadership paradigms, igniting empowerment and championing personal growth and collaboration.  

Pick up your copy of Love Your People – An Entrepreneurial Leadership System at Amazon

About AVL Growth Partners
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About SpringTime Ventures
SpringTime Ventures seeds high-growth startups in healthcare, fintech & insurtech, and logistics & supply chain. We look for founders with domain expertise, forging a path with a truly transformative technology. We only invest in software-based businesses in the USA. We bring a people-focused approach, work quickly, and reach conviction independently. Our initial check size is $600k. You can learn more about us and our approach.  

Transcript

Jeff Gardner: 0:01

You are not going to get right people 100 percent of the time. That should be your goal, but just know that it's not going to happen. I've hired thousands of people at this point, we will still get it wrong from time to time. The studies out there show that they range from, you get it right 40 percent of the time some say you get it right up to 80 percent of the time. But think about you're getting it, let's call it 50 to 60 percent of the time. So how do you increase the probability that you are going to hire the right people? The methodology that I love and I have found works so well is actually written by a gentleman named Geoffrey Smart, and the book is called"Who." I recommend it to people all of the time. It provides a very disciplined approach to hiring people. It starts with getting a scorecard together. One of the things we've talked previously about setting expectations, setting the big three, knowing what each person needs to deliver each quarter. If you sit down and say, listen, I'm going to hire a head of sales and the goals for this person is they need to be able to take me from 5 million to 25 million in the next 3 years. They need to be able to hire an A team. You have very specific goals. And so when you're interviewing them, you're not interviewing for some abstractness. You're going very, very specific and finding out, has this person done this? Have they taken a company from 5 to 25? Have they hired the A team? Part of the process is you're continually peeling back the onion and asking deeper and deeper questions to be able get to the answers to understand the way this person ticks. And then you score it up, and you lay side by side all the candidates you're considering for the position. I have found that when you are this disciplined with this process, we have pushed our hiring the right person up above the 90 percent mark. Highly recommend this book it's called The Who Methodology" written by Geoff Smart. It takes time but if you think about the time and energy it takes when you hire the wrong person it is a huge time saver in the long run.